From “Of the Sepulcher of the Creator” by Lucy Y. Shantell

The Sepulcher of the Creator is the primary religion of Pexate, specifically the Revelationist branch as opposed to the Incarnationists prevalent in Layyia. “Sepulcher” is a word for tomb, and that is in fact the purpose of the various religious buildings dotting Pexate, from the Grand Royal Sepulcher in Simnel to the ramshackle “barn Sepulchers” in Ioxus.

As detailed in the Epitaph, the Creator fashioned the world-that-is out of abiding love and the desire for something to lavish that love upon. Neither male nor female, It was all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good, and It wrought many beautiful works. The Creator worked alone and was Itself self-created–the details on that point have never been particularly important.

At one point, the Creator decided to fashion a group of Children for Itself. Rather than the children that were every living thing on the world, these Children were far closer to the Creator in nature. It took aspects of Itself and made them independent, using these children as servants and confidants in ways that mere mortals never could be. The Revelationalists believe that It was trying to create new worlds, each with their own Creator, as a final and logical next step after the triumph of creation. The Incarnationalists insist that the Children were an experiment, preparation for raising mortals to the level of demi-Creators themselves.

In either case, it was not to be. The Creator’s Children rebelled against their progenitor, to a one, and elected from among their number one to lead them against the Creator to unseat It and take control of the world-that-is for themselves. This Child was the only one of their number to have the audacity to take a name and a gender: he became known as Muolih the Spreading Darkness, and in this act severed the silver cord that had once bound him and his fellow Children to the Creator.

Sorrowfully, the Creator did battle with Its rebellious Children. One by one they were slain in great battles spoken of in the Epitaph, until only Muolih himself remained. In the fair fields of Noaad, they met one final time. After combat lasting a whole year, in which the land was blasted into a barren desert, Muolih and the Creator each struck a final blow simultaneously. They killed one another at a stroke.

Before the battle, though, the Creator had appeared in a vision to St. Xarius, the founder of the modern Sepulcher. The Creator, having forseen Its own death, assured Xarius that It would not truly die but would, instead, dwell in deathly dreams for an eon until, healed, It would return. The Creator promised that, even in death, it would hear supplications. On the day of Its rebirth, all would be granted, and all souls who had waited in the afterlife would be ushered into paradise. Until then, the Creator promised to work only subtly and dreamily for the betterment of Its loyal children.

St. Xarius took these visions and collected them in the Epitaph, bidding all those loyal to the Creator to build It grand tombs that It might not fade from their memory. And, in turn, adherents claim subtle miracles worked by the dead and dreaming Creator on their behalf. Of Muolih, nothing more is written: if the Spreading Darkness had a similar plan, it was lost or hidden. But to this day, the Sepulcher of the Creator forms the largest belief system in the world-that-is. The elven Eternal Way and the dwarven Dual Throne do not proseletyze, nor do the goblins who revere Muolih as their fallen champion. Only the orcish Hamurabash and the Way of the Three rival the Sepulcher, and many would argue that neither is a faith in the same sense.